Worship in the Beauty of Holiness — Leonard Ravenhill

Worship, Praise, and the Living Christ

Morning on worship. I want to read from the gospel recorded by Luke in chapter 7. By the way, all the time I'm here I'll be reading from the Living Bible, the King James Version. I remember years ago when the Living Bible first came out, a lady came to me so exalted, you know, full of joy.

She showed me this gorgeous expensive Bible. She said, I've got a Living Bible. I said, I've had one about 60 years. I never knew there was a dead one. Oh, people say services in our church are so dead.

I said, well, that's for sure one thing, the living Christ isn't in the midst. You can't have a dead meeting if the living Christ is there. You know, Ruskin, who lived just about a hundred years back in English history, he defined preaching as 30 minutes to raise the dead.

Well, I thought that was facetious, but it's not. You go to the average church, every row is death row. Isn't that right? If you said it wasn't, I'd chase you. I don't think 2 of people in America or England are born again.

That's very drastic, but I'm convinced of that. Okay, Luke chapter 7, verse 37. Behold, a woman in the city which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meet in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, began to wash his feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment.

Now when the Pharisee, which had been him, saw it, he spake with him himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would know what manner of woman this is, for she is a sinner. Jesus answering said unto him, Simon, I have somewhat to say unto thee.

And he said, Master, say on. There was a certain creditor which had two debtors, one owed him five hundred pence, and the other owed him fifty, and when he had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both.

Tell me therefore, which of them would love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose he that whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou'st rightly judged. And he turned to the woman, and said to the woman, and said to Simon, Seest thou this woman?

I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water, but she hath washed my feet with tears, and wiped them with the hairs of her head. Thou hast given me no kiss, but this woman since I came in hath not ceased to kiss my feet.

My head with oil thou didst not anoint, but this woman hath anointed my feet with ointment. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins which are many are forgiven, for she loved much. Speaking generally, prayer is preoccupation with our needs.

Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. Worship is preoccupation with God. Remember Malachi says, The Lord whom ye seek. Many people are not seeking the Lord, they're seeking miracles, they're seeking signs and wonders, but we're in a background.

The greatest need in America today is God. If I didn't believe that, I wouldn't be here. I'll be talking about revival praying tonight. But it's essential that we learn to worship. I'll tell you how valuable worship is.

Worship as Submission to God

Satan said to Jesus, Fall down and what? Worship me. Why? Because Satan had seen that in heaven, in the form of glory. He'd seen the cherubim, the seraphim falling down and worshiping Jesus Christ. Because in the 12th chapter of John, it says there that when Isaiah saw him, it was Jesus that he saw.

And therefore, Satan says, Fall down and worship me. Well, immediately you bend the knee in worship, you admit you're inferior, you acknowledge superiority, you acknowledge the authority of the person above you.

And Satan, he only wanted Jesus to let his knees kiss the ground. Just fall down for a minute and worship me. And he offered him what? The kingdoms of this world. Not the real estate. I don't think he said, I'll give you all of Australia and all these countries.

The devil's smart enough to know the earth is the Lord's. He didn't ask him for the earth, he asked him for, I'll give you the kingdoms. I'll give you the majestic military kingdom of Rome. Rome was already, had already been to England in 55 BC, and they conquered much of the world.

And Satan says, you fall down and worship me, I'll give you the military kingdom of the world. I'll give you the intellectual kingdom of the world, the Greeks. I'll give you the religious capital of the world, or power of the world, the Jews.

Just fall down and worship me. Worship is the preoccupation of heaven. I love that first chapter in Hebrews. God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath made the heir of all things.

And I love that phrase, it says, when he had by himself, not with the help of the Virgin Mary, not with the help of the cherubim and seraphim, but by himself purged our sins. Then God said, let all the angels of the Lord worship him.

That's going to be amazing, when we get a glorified body. Maybe you don't want one. I'm sure my brother Adams, where is he? He wants one. I want one. Anybody else want one? Good. Great. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be, to have a glorified intellect?

I've heard some of the greatest preachers in the world. I heard C .S. Lewis preach once, and it left me cold. But one thing he said, he said a friend of his, very wealthy, had a child. And the child had everything it wanted, except a pony.

So eventually he bought the child a pony. And they had a groomsman, because the wealthy man liked to ride horses, his wife liked to ride horses. So the groomsman taught the little girl how to ride. Well then, she wanted to go outside of the estate.

And he said, you can go down to the big oak tree, between the gates of home, and the main road. Don't go past, because if you go past, you'll maybe get injured with the traffic. But one day she forgot, and she went past this oak tree.

And there was a gorgeous horse, a big riding horse. So she said, she took the reins. She told her daddy after, I took the reins of my pony, and threw them over a post. And I stopped this horse, and I talked with it, and he talked back.

And she said, we had a wonderful conversation. He said, what are you riding that thing for? Why don't you ride a, me, I'm a horse. Get on my back. And she said, he set off, and he galloped around the field.

And he came back and said, listen, if you really got on this, on my back, you'd know what riding really is. That pony thing, that's no good. And he said, darling, you've got five things to correct in your riding.

And he numbered them. And then he said, when you master those five things, I'll very joyfully buy you that horse, or one like it. The man has lots of them. But he said, I learned a lesson there. He said, like that little girl looked over the hedge and saw the horse.

He said, sometimes I go to the edge of time, I look into eternity, I see my glorified body, my glorified intellect, my limitless power that I'll have in the eternity with God. And I say, oh God, I'd love to have a body like that, an intellect like that, emotions like that, the capacity to worship you as I want to do, but I can't.

I'm too confined and limited. And he says, God says to me, Lewis, listen, there are five things wrong with your life. When you straighten them out, I'll bring you over the fence, and I'll bring you into eternity and give you everything that you want.

And that's all he said. That was the end. And he left everybody speechless. They thought they were going to hear some profound thing, you know, about the attributes of God. And he told us a Sunday school lesson.

But it was glorious. But I'll give you some other points on that later in the week. So prayer is preoccupation with our needs. Praise is preoccupation with our blessings. And worship is preoccupation with God.

Seeking God as the Supreme Goal

Here's an old English hymn. Can I read it? If you say no, I will. My goal is God himself, not joy, not peace, not even blessing, but thee my God. Tis his to lead me there, not mine, but his at any cost, dear Lord, by any road.

So faith bounds forward to its goal in God, and love can trust her Lord to lead her there. Upheld by him my soul is following hard, till God hath fulfilled my deepest prayer. No matter if the way be sometimes dark, no matter though the cost be often great, he knoweth how I best shall reach the goal.

I'm sorry. He knoweth how I best shall reach the mark. The way that leads to him must needs be straight. One thing I know, I cannot say him nay. One thing I do, I press toward my Lord. My God, my glory here from day to day, and in the glory there, my great reward.

My goal is God himself, not joy, not peace, not even blessing, but thee my God. Every preacher that comes to my office, and I get, I get too many, we get about 30 visitors a week to the house from all over the world, and they want to tell me where they've been, and who they know, and what they've read, and I look them in the eye and say, tell me this, look me straight in the eye, do you know God?

Do you know hardly one man in a dozen says he does? Well that's all we're here on earth for. We're not here to be famous, great preachers, do this, do that, we're here to know God. And Paul is saying at the end of his journey, he's written 14 epistles if you give him Hebrews, and I think he wrote that, he's, what does he say, I press toward the mark, I want to know God, and I believe that's a great sign of spiritual health, not to be content, you know I'm convinced of this, that most people in these days in America and England live on meetings, we don't live on God, we don't have that intimacy, we don't have that fellowship, we don't know when we grieve him, we don't know when we give him joy, your only business in this world is to give pleasure to God, that's about the only thing we can give, God worship.

Dear God, he owns the universe, these stupid guys on TV, pardon me, oh give some money for God, God never sees it. I'll tell you what, when you get to heaven, you say who's that, is that the apostle, who's that, you'll know who the evangelists are in heaven, they'll be digging the streets up.

Well that's what the Bible says, the streets are paved with gold. Now don't start laughing at work tomorrow, they'll blame me. Do you sing that chorus, he walks with me and he talks with me? How many know it?

Oh good, where's the pianist, can you give us a key? Oh they told me I can do anything you like here, so I'm going to do that. He speaks and the sound of his voice is so sweet, the birds hush their sleep, it's not good singing but it's good, it's a good song.

The Woman Who Worshiped Jesus

You know often the preachers talk about the four gospels, well obviously there are not four gospels, there's one gospel told by four different people, and yet this one story, this story of this wonderful woman here washing the feet of Jesus, is told by each of the evangelists.

I mean, I think the only way actually to, the only way actually to understand the story is to fit it for a few moments in the framework of history. There's that awesome gap between Malachi and Matthew, 400 years of stillness without any prophetic voice, 400 years of darkness without any prophetic light, and then suddenly an amazing man came on the scene.

You know, in the last two or three years I get to preach to the Baptists quite a bit. How many Baptists were here, ex-Baptists? You know, I love to torment people, that's part of my joy, and you know they get pretty angry when I tell them it was a Baptist who first preached the baptism of the Holy Ghost.

They don't like to hear that, and then I tell them the Pentecostals, they were not the first, and they don't like to hear it, because the Baptists were there before them. But anyhow, it is a strange, one, I don't know if I'll preach him one night, John the Baptist is a favorite character of mine.

You know, he's like me, he had no office, no newsletter, no rich old ladies backing him, no miracles, no signs, no wonders. He never raised the dead, he did more than that, he raised the dead nation. Precious brother, I'd love to see God heal that brother Adam.

I've been in meetings where people have jumped out of wheelchairs. I used to have a great concern for paralyzed people, I still have, but I have a bigger concern for the paralyzed church. The church has to come to life.

It goes to the average church is about as exciting as a Tupperware party. If there's anything about the New Testament church, it was totally unpredictable. Do you think there's a Pentecostal pastor in America today, dare say, look, I'm bored to death.

Like a preacher called me recently, Brother Raymond, I'm in a Pentecostal church, I'm tired of refereeing fighting over what color carpet we're to have or what something else. Supposing he said, listen, we're going to have a clearance sale next Sunday morning.

I'm going to, I'm going to kill the two oldest deacons in the church. That'd be exciting, wouldn't it? Well, that's as much Pentecostal speaking in tongues. But we live not far from Dallas. Do you know there are 50 fastest growing churches in Dallas?

You know what kind of a church Jesus had? He had the fastest shrinking church. 5 ,000, 4 ,000, down and down. Goes one day, there were 11 left. Will he also go away? No, we're in a numbers game these days.

And it's so fatal actually. Okay, so you've got that gap, and then suddenly John the Baptist come. He wasn't ordained, isn't that terrible? There's only one ordination. It's in the 15th chapter of John.

I have ordained you. Boy, you can be ordained every hour on the hour for the next 10 years. We won't do a thing for you. Except you could frame all the thing, ordination certificates on the wall of the house.

Who cares a hill of beans? Degree. Oh, they've all, listen, anointing doesn't come with degrees or diplomas. Dear Lord, you can have 32 degrees and still be frozen. Boy, it must have been wonderful. Just to skip over this quickly.

You see, there's one thing you never have to do. You never have to advertise a fire, either physically or spiritually. God could have helped John the Baptist a lot better. He could have put that pillar of fire that led Israel, he could have put that pillar of fire on the spot where John Baptist was going to go.

He didn't do it. And he sent him there with the anointing of the Holy Spirit of God. Boy, read that first chapter in Luke. Anyhow, here's the man in the anointing in the power of the Holy Spirit. Before that, there'd been a terrible upheaval in Israel that had been an invasion by the Roman army.

I'll give you a story about that one night, a very brief one. Anyhow, the whole nation had been disturbed. Suddenly, they have all these foreigners coming in. People they've never seen before. They didn't speak the language.

They weren't Philistines. They weren't Amalekites or Hittites. They were the Romans that came in in all their splendor and majesty with their armies. And so the whole nation had been shaken, politically, economically.

But they got over that. Then comes John the Baptist. He upset the whole place. You know, you can't, somebody in a newspaper said two or three years ago, there's a revival sweeping America today, but it's not obvious.

Dear God, can you have an earthquake? Can it not be obvious? Dear Lord, once there's a revival, everything will shake. In fact, now we're beginning through these tragedies of preachers. Everything that can be shaken is being shaken.

And this is judgment at the house. It's going to spread. There's one prophet, he'll be coming here before long, says a hundred ministries will fall before the end of this year. Last week, my neighbor, a dear Pentecostal brother, came in.

He'd spent a week with Dave Wilkerson. Dave used to be my neighbor. We used to spend hours every week together. And he said, David is saying in New York now, there'll be a total collapse of the economy in October of this year.

So what? The only thing that troubles me is when the throne begins to rock. And that won't shake. I love that hymn. You don't have hymn books here, do you? Terrible. I'll send you a couple of hymns that you can throw on the screen.

I mean, I mean, real fabulous hymns. Like, they both go to the tune, Onward Christian Soldiers. One was written by A. B. Simpson, the great American. Once it was a blessing, now it is the Lord. Once it was a healing, now it is his word.

A feeling, now it is one. Once his gifts I wanted, now they give it on. And it goes right through like that. It's majestic and moving. And the other one is from a current Pentecostal book in England. It's an old hymn written early this century.

Thou the rose of Sharon, let thy praises roll. Lily of the valley, flower of my soul. Then it goes on to talk about love. Waters cannot quench it. Floods can never drown. Substance cannot buy it. Love's a priceless crown.

Oh, the wondrous story, mystery divine. I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine. I'll send them both, and you can get these, what do you call these, transparencies, and put them on the screen. And get stirred up, anyhow.

So first you've got the economic upheaval. Then you've got John the Baptist. John did no miracle. You know, it's all below me. Like, one famous preacher's always saying, get full of faith in the Holy Ghost and speak in tongues, which is wonderful.

I've got two Pentecostals. Both my boys are far better preachers than I am. David's preaching somewhere, and you'll hear him this week. He's been pastoring the largest Pentecostal church in New Zealand for 15 years, along with three or four other men.

And he's been home a year. You see, God tests us. He's been home a year in America, and hardly anybody opened a door to him. He's trusting God for every penny, but he's a tremendous man of God. Okay, so John does no miracle.

But the anointing of God is there. Who came to see him? The scribes and the Pharisees. They wouldn't go hear anybody else. But then John comes and upsets them, just like they've been upset economically.

They get upset theologically. He doesn't follow their traditions. Boy, he's not very polite. What did he, what did he call the Pharisees? Whited sepulchres. My goodness, that's like me walking into the Vatican and saying you all...

Well, anyhow, there's going to be an earthquake spiritually before too long. I believe that. I'm expecting to live. Two or three people have been to our house and prophesied over me. I'm in my, what, almost 83.

And they prophesied, well, Paul Kane is coming. And where's Brother Bob? What's his name, Bob? Bob Jones. He told me the other day, the next three and a half years of my life... Martha dear, where are you?

You're going to have to put up with me three and a half more years. Next three and a half years are going to be my best. Glorious. Do you know what? The Holy Ghost is going to come on America. Ten years from now, if you mention Jimmy Swaggart, they say, who's he?

Does he sell sausage? You talk about Billy Graham, they say, why, is he running for government? God's going to do things that will exclude all the things we've ever seen. We're going to the school of the Holy Ghost.

Yeah, I talked with Smith Wigglesworth and some of those guys that they were in the junior league. We're going into the big league. God has reserved some better thing for us. The world population is greater now than ever.

Sin is deeper. Sin is arrogant. Dear God, couldn't people stand up to John the Baptist preaching? You get fellas on TV say, do you know I've been to the White House three times or six times? So what? Nobody ever got through.

The 17 preachers that Nixon had, nobody got through to him. Do you think John Baptist will get through? Do you think John Baptist will get invited back 16 more times? Dear Lord. Boy, if Elijah got there, he'd leave blisters on them.

So what? You have what? The military upset, economic upset, theological upset, and then comes John the Baptist. That must have been amazing to hear him. Would you like to go to the same school? It's a school of silence.

I get young guys, Mr. Rameau, I'm sending you my tape. Don't. I've enough to pave the yard with them. Read my manuscript. I can't. I've two eyes. I can't two separate things. I don't want the tapes. Someone would like.

But they all want to meet John the Baptist. Well, I say, well, are you married? Yes. Have you increased your insurance? No. But you're better. Why? Are you John the Baptist? Sure. Well, you're only going to live six months.

Oh, they write and ask me, will you, will you send me your, your mantle? My mantle? Well, you have a mantle. God put a mantle. I say, no, I won't send you my mantle. I'll tell you what we'll do. I'll send you some of my sackcloth.

I never hear from them again. I know how to get, shut them all up now, brother. You try that. I'll send you some sackcloth and I say, oh, no, no, no. We all want to be prophets. Nice little, little guys that meet and talk to old ladies in motels or hotels.

I'll tell you about the, something about a prophet tonight. It's the greatest need of the day. Amen. And you can't make a man a prophet or elect him. God makes him. See evangelist, John Baptist wasn't evangelist, he's a prophet.

You know, evangelists, evangelists go around raising funds. Revivalists go around raising hell. And John Baptist was a hell raiser. Boy, we're going to see the greatest devastation in the area of spirituality that the world's ever seen.

Because God still loves this wicked, vile, corrupt world. Okay, so now let's get, we've got to John the Baptist. So John was a troublemaker. He wasn't very polite, very rugged, very simple. Boys are boys.

He was strained in his dress. He wore some leather shorts. I said that in a holiness meeting and they fired me. They waited for me behind the platform. A guy jumped on me nearly pulled me to the ground.

He said, you said John Baptist wear leather shorts. Well, what did he wear? Well, I said, well, they were leather shorts. An old camel skin, strained in his dress, strained in his diet, morning, noon and night.

What did he have? Locust burgers. Simplicity. Everything's so involved today. We're going to have to go back to simplicity. Lifestyle simplicity, language simplicity, with no desire for promotion or anything else.

Jesus as the Dividing and Disruptive Lord

Well, then after John goes, in comes Jesus. The greatest troublemaker ever. People say, I want to be like Jesus. Do you? Are you sure? You mean you want 40 days alone in the wilderness? You want to get Semini?

You want to Judas? You want to Thomas? You want to be an outcast? The first thing Jesus did before he could walk or talk was divide the city. Herod was troubled and all Jerusalem with him. And the minority of a little old woman, a hundred years of age, and Simeon and a few others.

The last thing he did on the cross was divide men. And during his ministry in between the cradle and the cross, it says he went to the synagogue and because he went to the synagogue, there was a division because of him.

Jesus brings division. He doesn't bring unity. He brings division. And there's going to be the greatest division in our day that has ever been since the reformation. It's coming up. But let me rush on to this.

What time do you want to go home? Four or five? But okay, let's, let's put this in context again. Jesus was the most amazing man that ever lived. He was the most amazing man then. And somehow this person tried to get him into the home, uh, to go to dinner, as we would say.

Well, I'm sure the first thing they did, it was a man who invited him. He got a list. He kept crossing out names, putting in other names. He got the right folk there. After that, they just discussed the food.

So you get the folk, you get the food. I suppose he put flowers and decoration and everything was in order. Everybody of importance was there. Here is the miracle worker. Here is the man that everybody talks about.

Whether you go to the temple or the synagogue, whether you go to the marketplace, whether you go to draw water at the well, the conversation is Christ, Christ, Christ. And yet when revival comes, that's what happened.

People don't talk politics. They don't talk sport. They don't talk money. They talk Christ. When the Holy Ghost comes in America, you'll go into Sears and start buying something and somebody will strike up Blessed Assurance.

You'll have a prayer meeting on your hands. Then when you go to your favorite dining room, McDonald's, somebody will strike up. And it happened in the Welsh Revival. I've talked with people in Wales back in the 1930s, in the 1920s, who went through the Welsh Revival.

And people could eat their meals down in the coal mine. They'd eat their meals while they were working and then turn the whole of the underground into a prayer meeting. All singing that great hymn, they sing, guide me O thou great Jehovah.

But you can't be normal and have an abnormal manifestation of God. It's not possible. So Jesus comes along. There are signs and wonders and miracles and the whole city is disturbed. But somehow this Simon manages to get him as a guest.

And I'm sure he posted guards there and said, well, don't let so-and-so come as so-and-so. Well, Simon goes out and then he comes back. When he comes in, a servant calls him, Master, come, come, look there.

Listen, I told you, don't let anybody questionable come here. And there's a despicable woman, one of the outstanding sinners. And the guard says, at least Simon says, don't let, if she comes near, turn the dogs on her.

She's already here. And he looked and there is the woman. What's she doing? Washing his feet. He doesn't turn her away. You see, this was a very, very mundane thing. The wealthy people kept slaves at the door.

And when a traveler came in, they wore no shoes, they wore no hose and the grit got between their toes and it was uncomfortable. So the first thing you do is pass your visitor over to someone here to wash their feet.

Now, this woman went, it was premeditated. And what she did, the Lord Jesus did here, he received what she did and he rewarded what she did. And it's recorded here what she did. She didn't go to ask a favor.

She didn't say, I've got a cousin that's lame and blind or something. Please heal. She didn't go. Of all the people that went, as far as we know, she's the only one that took a gift. Everybody went to get.

What did you bring the Lord this morning? Something to drop in the offering box? Did you say, I can hardly get to the sanctuary? You know, if you came here charged with God, this atmosphere will be electric every time you come.

I'm so full of God, I'm bursting with joy, I'm bursting with adoration, I'm bursting with worship. So she what? She should wash his feet with water. No, no, not those holy feet. So what did she do? She washed them with tears instead of water.

She should wipe them with a towel. No, not those feet. Can you imagine when that woman knelt there? She came to do one thing. She came to worship him. What did the wise men do? The wise men came and what did they come for?

Came to worship him. What did they bring? They brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. They didn't bring trivia. They brought the most expensive things that they had. Maybe they sold everything in order to buy something which was exquisite and extraordinary, worthy of putting at the feet of a king.

But we don't have gifts like that. Some of you have very rich intellects. The good doctor I hear that in the chair there has a PhD, I think. I have a PhD too. Posthole digger. It isn't as good as his but I enjoy it.

Giving One's Best to Christ

Yes, God has got hold of some of the most wonderful people in history. A hundred years back in England there was a young man there by the name of Henry Martin. He was about the only person that came out with any distinction from the preaching of Charles Simeon.

There was a revival in England before ever Wesley had it. And Charles Simeon had it in a church of England. He preached with the Holy Ghost anointing him. Do you know how well he preached? The deacons dragged all the seats out of the church and threw them in the churchyard and locked the door up.

And he wouldn't stop. He preached and preached till the Holy Ghost come. And they couldn't capture the Holy Ghost so they had to be spectators. And Simeon sat there. He was the most brilliant scholar in Cambridge University.

He was a senior wrangler at 21. He carried off the highest scholarship and suddenly God called him to India. And then he fell in love with a girl called Lydia. And he said when he prayed, when one voice said India, the other said Lydia.

Anyhow he came and as the hymn writer says, in that lovely hymn of love that will not let me go, I lay in dust life's glory dead. And he went to India. What did he do? He took that colossal intellect.

If he stayed in England in politics, he would have been the Prime Minister of England. If he stayed in the Church of England, he would have become the Archbishop of Canterbury. What did he do? He went to India and he took a Greek New Testament.

And they translated the Greek New Testament from Greek into Hindustani. And when he finished it, he made that long journey from India to Cairo in Egypt. And then he worked on that same Greek Testament and translated it into Arabic, a more difficult language.

Every missionary in India today owes a debt to that brilliant young man that threw away all the honors of the world and committed all he had to Jesus Christ. And that's what God's looking for in this day.

I lay in dust life's glory dead. So anyhow this woman washes his feet, not with water, but washes them with tears. When she's washed his feet with water, what does she do? She takes ointment, very precious.

If you read the different versions, there are four versions, read them all, I don't have time to do that for you. But it says she took a one pound of ointment. Does it matter whether it weighs one pound or 300?

Sure it does. Why? Because Jesus here is alive. She washes his feet, those tired feet. Do you think when she got those feet in her hand, am I too imaginative that she saw a nail print in them? Do you think she was at the cross when they were bleeding and she said, oh I'm glad I did it?

Because she broke with protocol, she broke with conventionality. She's no right to be in a stag party. But you see love is irresistible. She broke through and got there without invitation, washed his feet, wiped and then poured the ointment on his feet.

And there's the point. She poured his ointment on his feet and what? And then wiped his feet with the hair of her head. So what happened? The fragrance she poured out on him came back on her. You see we don't pray long enough.

We give a lot of, Lord, Lord take care of this, this is my shopping list today, Lord, get all the angels in heaven busy, do this, do that, do the other. We don't stay until his fragrance breaks on us.

Brokenness, Holiness, and the Fragrance of Worship

On my desk I have a letter, a copy of a letter for 1748, I think it is. It's the daughter of Jonathan Edwards. She was going to marry David Brainerd but she didn't. She, she, she died three weeks after him.

But she says, you know, living with my famous daddy is very wonderful. But she said, you know, daddy is a tremendous preacher. Oh yes, he preached sinners in the hands of an angry God. But she said he spent all night on the floor weeping before he did that.

Sure, Jesus went into Jerusalem and whipped them. But read Luke's version, he says before he whipped them, he wept over them. He wept over the city. There's no way to preach except with brokenness these days.

We live in a broken nation. Marriages are broken, bodies are broken. Bodies are broken with disease. Bodies are broken with lust. Girls' bodies are broken with pregnancies. And it's a broken world. And I'll tell you something for nothing, because you're not giving me an offering this morning, so I'll tell you something for nothing.

But I'll tell you what, we're not going to move this generation unless we're broken over it. I've no right to expect you to break your heart as a sinner with your lust and your lying and your deceitfulness and your uncleanness.

You cover up every week, every meeting you come to church. I've no right to expect that I'm broken over it. So the fragrance she poured out on him came back on her. So Jonathan Edwards' daughter says, yes, people admire my daddy.

He, skipping a minute, Martin Lloyd-Jones told me in London one day as we were talking privately, he said, Brother Rayneal, the greatest intellect America ever had was not Edison with his inventions.

The greatest intellect America ever had was, what's his name again? Thank you. Jonathan Edwards. Colossal intellect. I think I have everything he wrote. And I'll tell you, I can read that and weep and be broken over it.

But she says, my daddy is a towering figure. But she said, I wish you could come to my home in the morning when mother goes into a closet. When she comes out, she needs a veil over her face. She's so radiant with God.

I doubt if any woman lives, she said, that knows God as my mother does. What do your children see you doing? Powdering your face? Dear Lord, you've been doing that 20 years. It doesn't look much better to me.